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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24328072">when thou liest down</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bushwah/pseuds/Bushwah'>Bushwah</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>we the clay [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fake AH Crew (Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ableism, Alternate Universe - Cults, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Amoric Horror, Begging, Boundary Issues, Character Study, Classical conditioning, Consent Issues, Dacryphilia, Dehumanization, Developing Relationship, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Erotic Massage, F/M, Fear of Abandonment, Female Jack Pattillo, Forced Bonding, Gaslighting, Girl Penis, Hand Jobs, Heavy Petting, Identity Issues, Intimacy, Making Out, Neck Kissing, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Nudity, Open Marriage, POV Perpetrator, Pet Names, Relationship Negotiation, Sexual Harassment, Sexual Tension, Spiritual Abuse, Switching, Trans Female Jack Pattillo, Trans Male Michael Jones, Unreliable Narrator, abusive sex denial, desexualization, fetishization of past trauma, fetishization of present trauma, fresh pressed mikey, hurt/false comfort, transactional sex, what is sex anyway</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:49:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,765</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24328072</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bushwah/pseuds/Bushwah</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's really no reason petting Michael <em>should</em> cause that sort of damage.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack Pattillo/Geoff Ramsey, Michael Jones/Jack Pattillo, Ryan Haywood/Jack Pattillo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>we the clay [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643119</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>when thou liest down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is an FPF fic based exclusively on the Fake AH Crew lore as set forth by Rooster Teeth Productions. This work owes an additional debt of thanks to Wren wrenseroticlibrary.tumblr.com and their collab partner Threatie alastair-made-me-undo-it.tumblr.com, posting collaboratively as Wrespawn on the AO3, for their contributions to the FAHC fandom.</p><p>All major characters in this series are abusive, in that they use abuse tactics in conducting their relationships. However, the degree of trauma they inflict depends on a variety of factors, within and outside their control. Abusive acts committed from a position of extreme power, such as Jack's control over the respawn machine (regarding the crew) or the other Fakes' access to it (regarding outsiders), are both particularly damaging and particularly unjustifiable.</p><p>This fic is about Jack discovering that Michael has DID and that she's into that. It features intense gaslighting and inappropriate, predatory fetishization of trauma responses.</p><p>The abusive sex denial tag is for a character refusing to acknowledge another character's sexual desires within the context of a sexual relationship. Merely refusing sex does not constitute abuse under any circumstances; the abusive act here is the continuation of a sexual relationship where one of the participants is prevented from discussing what they want out of sex.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There's really no reason petting Michael <em>should</em> cause that sort of damage.</p><p>Jack knows her tactics can damage her projects. But this time, she doesn't see how it happened. Michael had been <em>not there</em>, and when she'd tried to snap him out of it, Mikey had only followed her placidly to be tortured. (Solitary confinement <em>is</em> torture, although she doubts Michael knows that.)</p><p>Clearly, this calls for further experimentation.</p><p>She has Michael on the bed in what she's been privately calling <em>Mikey's room</em>. It's pastel blue and yellow, with white surfaces that would show hard use. A decorative room for a decorative person.</p><p>Michael is visibly uncomfortable, although not really scared. It's difficult for anyone to be scared when she's touching them, and Michael is no exception. If anything, he seems unusually susceptible.</p><p>...Sometimes. Other times, he's resistant, although he's never really resilient. She's observed that he takes time to recover from her work, hours or days where he responds to aggression with deference or flight rather than his customary bravado.</p><p>A combination of luck, planning, and control has meant that Geoff hasn't tried to assign him a mission when he isn't himself, but honestly, it's only a matter of time, and she should really have a better idea of the parameters of the state before it's tested in combat. She's been avoiding him during those periods because her presence seems to prolong them, and she wants him functional, except when he's actively being worked on.</p><p>She's also noticed that when he <em>does</em> surrender, it's all at once, and he doesn't make any further attempts to elude her control. He seems to like it a lot, actually, as much as Ryan, although Michael doesn't yet love her the way Ryan does. That absolute lack of resistance is something she treasures.</p><p>She hasn't tried pushing on it—has treated him more or less the same after he gives in, with a little more intimacy of the varieties she knows he likes, in an attempt to avoid accidentally punishing him for doing what she wants him to do—but she has <em>noticed</em>, and sometimes when he sighs contentedly under her hands she feels herself getting aroused.</p><p>He's not sighing now. He's not really tense, either, but only because she's taken that from him. “You doing okay?” she asks, and it takes him a bit to route the question through his body enough to say, “Yeah, I'm fine. Like I said.”</p><p>She hums a gentle admonishment. “It's not good for you to be so stressed all the time,” she argues. “You need to take time to rest. People don't do their best work when they're worrying about everything at once.”</p><p>Michael scoffs. “Are you saying I'm not good at what I do?”</p><p>“Not at all,” she says warmly. “You <em>are</em> good. But you could be better.”</p><p>She's watching him closely, and that's how she notices when his eyes steady and he looks directly at her without challenge for the first time since she started her work.</p><p>“How?” he asks.</p><p>She thinks about her answer for a while, petting him while she does. He reacts differently now that he's surrendered. All his attention is on her, and every tiny change in her demeanor is reflected and magnified in him.</p><p>“What are you scared of?” she asks him, finally, when she realizes that that's <em>fear</em>.</p><p>His voice is quiet and tentative when he answers, a far cry from his usual bold wit. “Are you mad at me?”</p><p>“No, honey,” she says. “I'm just thinking about what a good question you asked earlier. You want to be better at your work, yeah?”</p><p>“If that's what you want.”</p><p>“What do <em>you</em> want?”</p><p>The question seems to stress him out, so she takes it back with a croon. “It's okay, honey, you don't have to know. Is there anything you want right now?”</p><p>He looks at her with abject devotion as he says, “This? <em>You.</em>”</p><p>She chuckles. God, he just gets more perfect. “I can do that,” she says. “Anything in particular?”</p><p>“Whatever you want,” he gets out, overwhelmed, before he crawls over, looking her directly in the eyes for permission (which she gives with a little nod), and cuddle-attacks her.</p><p>She's never seen Michael act like this. On a whim, she kisses his forehead. “What's gotten into you, baby bear?” she murmurs, not expecting an answer.</p><p>“I'm <em>better</em>,” he says in an oddly determined voice. She separates their bodies so she can look at his face, her hand still on his shoulder. His back is perfectly straight. “I'm <em>good</em>,” he says, and bursts into tears.</p>
<hr/><p>So sometimes Michael is distant, fiercely independent, prepared to violently repress anything that looks like weakness; and other times, he's sobbing and clinging to her like his life depends on it—like if he let go, he'd fall apart.</p><p>She doesn't let him go.</p><p>The really interesting thing is how <em>completely</em> his goals change. One moment, he's calculating how he can get himself out of this situation; the next, he's actively trying to get closer to her. The rest of his demeanor also changed at the same time: the signs of overwhelm when she showed him affection, the evident dependence on her approval; things she'd been working on, but didn't expect to have borne fruit so quickly. It's like the sun has emerged from behind a cloud, and suddenly all the shadows are sharp and stark, revealing shapes that had been hidden.</p><p>Like a switch flipped, and suddenly the man she'd been courting was already hers.</p><p>It's the separation there that's confusing to her, because in her experience, separation like that doesn't happen within seconds, or even within hours. That sort of total change is something that takes months of careful work, and even then, they're still the same person, just—</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>There's two of him. That's why. There have been two of him from the beginning. That's why he inverted so fast when she was first working on him. That's why his memories of his time with her have been evident when she's working, but not at other times.</p><p>Someone hurt him so severely that he <em>shattered</em> under the strain—broke him into fucking <em>pieces</em>, separated his violence from his softness until they weren't aspects of a whole man but fragments of a deeply injured one. Now that she thinks about it, of course they did; she's known from the beginning that Michael had another side that he was hiding.</p><p>Someone else might have called it feminine. That would be a cheap jab at Michael's insecurities. Jack prefers to strike at the root. Michael's other self is gentle. Loving. <em>Soft</em>.</p><p>Just like her.</p><p>God, it's like he was made for her. Like everything he's been was leading up to this moment, here, crying in her arms.</p><p>There's Michael, who fights and kills and never stops moving even if it's only in his own head; and then there's Mikey, this shy beautiful man who doesn't know how not to trust her. Who maybe doesn't <em>want</em> to know, and who she will do anything it takes to make sure never learns.</p><p>“You <em>are</em> good, baby bear,” she says softly. His shoulders hitch. She turns his face up toward her and gives him an exploratory peck on the lips.</p><p>His eyes go wide, but he's still looking at her, nervous and <em>hopeful</em>, and she groans and kisses him again. He wriggles in her lap, and he's not hard (yet?) but <em>she</em> is, fuck, has been since he started crying. There's a decent chance he won't remember this when he's himself again, but she doesn't want to count on that.</p><p>Although really, he's <em>always</em> been himself. Her precious helpless Mikey has just as much a claim to reality as rough-edged Michael. She kisses him like she could tell him with her body that he's safe with her—that she won't expect him to be more than he is, or less; that she knows him and wants to know him more, wants to know everything.</p><p>When she pauses for them to catch their breath, she reads a question on Mikey's face and almost laughs. “Didn't I tell you I was trans like you?” she says, guiding his hand to her cock. His gaze is still locked with hers. He's panting. His face is blotchy from crying. He doesn't try to pull away.</p><p>“That's my cock,” she says. “Don't worry about touching it. It's just a part of me, like yours is a part of you.”</p><p>He still looks like there's something he wants to ask, and, fuck, if there's ever been a time to indulge him, it's now. “Go on, honey,” she says, moving him so his legs are around her waist and his arms around her shoulders.</p><p>“I figured it out,” he says, and adds, “I think.”</p><p>“What did you figure out, honey?” Her hands are at his hips, steadying him on her lap. She wants to kiss him again.</p><p>“What I want.” He pauses. “Jack.”</p><p>“Mikey,” she answers, because that's his name. “And what is it? What do you think you want, baby bear?”</p><p>“You. Inside me.” He's blushing, but he doesn't look away. “I want you to fuck me. Please.”</p><p>She growls and pushes him down on the bed to kiss his neck. She's prepared for him to freak out again like the first time she touched him there, but he only jolts and then holds still. His pulse is fast under her tongue.</p><p>“I'm so proud of you,” she says, “so fucking proud, Mikey, you don't even know,” and his hands are on her back so lightly like he doesn't dare restrain her but <em>needs</em> to be touching her, and, fuck, she's not about to stop him. She's pleasantly engaged with the task at hand, something like intimacy and something like the bestowment of a reward, and he looks up at her with that wide-eyed <em>lost</em> look and she has to kiss him, that's all there is to it.</p><p>If anything he seems more affected than he was earlier, out of breath and desperate to be closer to her, his hands trying not to grab her and pull her close with only limited success. She's much stronger than him like this—and that's another thing; Michael is smaller than she is, but he's all wiry muscle, and Mikey's apparent physical incapacity has to be some sort of illusion—so when she pushes him down again, he stays. His lips are dark and full from kissing, his eyes still red with the memory of tears.</p><p>She wants to fuck him. The desire isn't just in her cock; it thrums through her body, a sense of potential. She wasn't planning to sexualize this yet, if ever, but she also wasn't expecting him to come right out and <em>ask</em> her to.</p><p>But she also doesn't want him to get the idea that he gets to decide what she does to him, so, reluctantly, she takes that off the table for tonight.</p><p>“I'm so glad you told me, honey,” she says instead, lying down half next to him and half on top of him, “but we really don't have to go that fast. I want you to be comfortable, I don't want you to just be doing it to make me happy.”</p><p>“I'm not,” he says, defensively, and—yes, perfect, he's convincing himself. “I want to...” He trails off. “Why won't you let me just give it to you?”</p><p>“I don't want to hurt you, honey. I don't think you know what you want.”</p><p>“But I...”</p><p>She lets herself consider withdrawing her favor from him. She doesn't make any move against him—doesn't even know if or how he'll be able to tell—but he still flinches.</p><p>Then she offers a compromise position. “Do you want to take off your clothes, so I can touch you easier? No sex, just...”</p><p>“Please,” Mikey says, not waiting for her to finish. “Please, yes, Jack. Please.”</p><p>She smiles, satisfied, and rolls off of him to let him strip for her.</p><p>It's not sexual—he doesn't make it sexual. She told him already that she didn't want that, and he wouldn't dare defy her. (She wonders idly if Mikey understands the difference between an order and a boundary. She hopes he doesn't.)</p><p>But there's still a charge to it. Perhaps it's that she's watching him do it; he's never taken his clothing off in front of her before. Perhaps it's the fact that they're both hard. Perhaps it's a perversely sexual interest in his very acceptance of the situation as chaste.</p><p>She leaves her own clothing on, not wanting to take her attention off of him. She could try to insist that he ignore his arousal, but no, then he won't sleep. This needs to be resolved.</p><p>“C'mere, honey,” she says when he's fully nude, and he throws himself at her. She catches him and holds him firmly for a while. The tension goes out of him all at once, as it always does, and she uses the opportunity to rearrange him so that his back is pressed up against her chest and her arm is slung over him. Her erection is unavoidably in contact with him, and she's sure he notices it, but she doesn't draw attention to it, and neither does he.</p><p>When they're all settled in, she gives him another minute or so before she starts petting him again.</p><p>She only has one free arm, as one of them is trapped under her, but that's all right. She makes up for it with her mouth on the side of his neck, kissing and nipping and making him shiver. She doesn't want to hurt him, even in the way that lovers do, but the light scrape of teeth in that vulnerable place isn't exactly threat, isn't exactly pain.</p><p>She makes sure that by the time her hand shifts to between his legs, it doesn't feel like a difference so much as a continuation. This is just another place for her to be petting him, another area of his body that needs her care. Conversely, it's undeniably been a little bit sexual from the beginning, if he can even remember the beginning at this point; he'll remember taking off his clothes and begging her to fuck him, and this could be plausibly read as an extension of that.</p><p>Now and again he stirs, the beginning of some purposeful motion, and she licks at his neck to help him forget. That's separate from the squirming that is by now continuous, wordlessly repeating his need. Her touch is firm, but with no roughness to it; gentle, but with no hesitation. She knows exactly what she wants from him, and she's going to get it.</p><p>He holds deliberately still, barely breathing, as he gets closer to orgasm. Like he fears, correctly, that moving would make it stop.</p><p><em>It's only petting,</em> her hand says with every leisurely motion. <em>It's only touch. It never has to end.</em></p><p>But of course it does end. Mikey's cock pulses in her hand as he ducks down his head. She keeps petting him there, softly, until the tension in his back begins to register as signaling pain; and then she lets go. Cards her fingers through his pubic hair, gently, before returning to rubbing his hip with her thumb.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says, so quiet as to be nearly inaudible. “Didn't mean to...”</p><p>“It's okay, Mikey,” she murmurs back. “You're okay.”</p><p>He falls asleep like that, sated and content; curled up with her in the room she gave him, on the bed she gave him, in the body she gave him, as the self she gave him. She keeps petting him until she's sure he's out, and then gets up, fetches a blanket from the closet, and spreads it over him.</p><p>She bites her lip and squeezes her cock through her shorts. He looks <em>delicious</em> like that, lax and trusting, and for a moment she thinks of bending again her resolution not to fuck him, climbing back into bed with him and grinding on his sleeping body until she reaches climax.</p><p>But no, no. Her reasons still hold. He could wake up, remember too much. She'll have better chances soon, if she plays her cards right.</p><p>She steals out of Mikey's room, locking the door behind herself. Tonight she'll sleep with Geoff—as usual; he <em>is</em> her husband.</p><p>Tonight she'll ask Geoff if they can switch. She hasn't felt like topping him in a while, and she expects that he'll be eager to comply.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Proverbs 3:24.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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